Retailers and restaurants frequently hire part-time employees. Creating a schedule that works well for everyone on staff can be both challenging and time consuming. Even after a schedule is completed, employees often trade schedules, which adds additional complexity and in some cases results in unexpected costs to the business owner. Techniques have been developed for automating aspects of assignment scheduling processes. For example, spreadsheet-based scheduling tools have been devised for the routine scheduling tasks. In addition, products offered by AtStaff, Inc. of Durham, N.C., USA (e.g., www.physicianscheduler.com) attempts to provide assignment scheduling capability taking into account fairness, coverage requirement, personnel conflicts, staff requests, and workload limits.